No jail in Harrison Township hit-and-run car-bicycle crash

A woman received a relatively light sentence for crashing her car and injuring a 17-year-old Harrison Township girl on a bicycle, but it didn’t upset the victim.

“I think it’s low, but I’m not really concerned about it,” Kara Duquet said Tuesday after the sentencing of Margaret Fronczak. “I don’t really care about it. Good for her. I’m over it. She’s over it. Everybody should just get over it. Everybody messes up.”

Fronczak, a Milford resident, received no jail time and only one year probation after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of a serious-injury accident, punishable by up to five years in prison, from visiting Judge Antonio Viviano of Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens. The collision broke Duquet’s legs and her jaw, among other injuries. She was in the hospital for 23 days and a wheelchair for several months.

Visiting Judge Antonio Viviano, who was substituting for Judge James Biernat, could have sentenced Fronczak up to 11 months in jail under the agreement Biernat had with her, and up to five years probation.

“He did what he is supposed to do,” Duquet said of Viviano.

Duquet did not attend the sentencing because she was attending classes at Macomb Community College. Her step-grandparents attended and were unhappy with the judge’s sentence.

“I’m very upset,” said Duquet’s tearful grandmother, Connie Fournier, moments after the sentencing. “She should have gotten a year in jail. She caused a lot of pain and injury, not just physical pain and not to just Kara but to her whole family.

“This is just a slap on the fingers.”

Duquet’s reaction differed from the view she held several months ago when she initially wrote an impact statement in which she called Fronczak’s request for work-release in jail “a joke.”

“I think she should stay in jail for a year,” she said.

But she said over time she has gotten over the incident and is focused on new endeavors. She not only is studying sociology at MCC and may try to become a lawyer, but is pursuing other potential careers. She can now walk, albeit with a limp, and has completed physical therapy, although she does special exercises and may return to therapy, she said.

The incident occurred about 11 p.m. last June 16 when Fronczak struck Duquet with her Toyota Corolla as Duquet rode her bicycle on Jefferson Avenue in Harrison Township. Fronczak fled but was arrested about a week later after it was discovered she took her damaged car to a body shop for repair, saying her car was hit in a parking lot.

During Tuesday’s hearing, assistant Macomb prosecutor Michael Servitto vigorously opposed Fronczak’s request that she serve at the Wayne County Jail so she could do work-release near her job in downtown Detroit. Viviano granted that request although it became moot due to the absence of a jail term. She will serve one year of reporting.

Viviano said he could not speculate on what happened the night Kara was hit.

Fronczak does not recall about six hours of that night, including the collision, her attorney, Daniel Larin, said. He said she couldn’t have been drunk because she drank only three glasses of wine over several hours, based on comments from a friend who was with Fronczak earlier in the night. He believes she may have suffered some type of medical or mental issue, in the past mentioning a mini-stroke and on Tuesday suggested glucose problem.

“I don’t know what was going on that night,” Viviano said.

Larin claimed that Fronczak made no attempt to “hide” the incident.

“She didn’t know what happened,” he said.

But Servitto called that claim “disingenuous,” based on her actions and comments at the time.

“Her story was that her car was hit in a parking lot in Lansing, which is active deception,” Servitto said. “We believe the defendant was intoxicated. … The problem was we couldn’t charge her with OUIL (operating under the influence of liquor) because she fled the scene …. We couldn’t test her alcohol level.”

It is believed that Fronczak was the driver of a car that night that was reported by a 911 caller to be weaving between lanes on a Detroit-area freeway. Her credit card showed she purchased gas near Lansing that night.

Fronczak apologized and appeared remorseful at the sentencing.

“I know she has suffered and her family has suffered,” she said. “And I know it was my fault.”

Kara was hit moments after completing her shift busing tables at Terry’s Terrace at Jefferson and Crocker Boulevard and was on her way home a mile away. She was found by restaurant patrons in a nearby ditch.

She was injured only days after her graduation as valedictorian from L’Anse Creuse Central High School and days before her graduation party, which was postponed for three months.